Lights out! Man accused of using BB gun to make his point

Jim Tatum

jtatum@journalscene.com

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

A Ridgeville man who called law enforcement to report people disturbing his sleep in his home wound up spending the rest of the night in jail.

According to a Dorchester County Sheriff’s Office incident report, deputies responded to a call on Church Street in Ridgeville at a little after midnight on July 17 in reference to people in pickup trucks drinking alcohol and shining lights near the railroad tracks. While they were enroute to respond to the call, dispatch informed them that another call had just come in, this time a complaint about someone being shot with a BB gun.

The deputies arrived at a gravel pull-off area near the railroad tracks where they spoke to several individuals, including a 19-year-old Ridgeville woman who said she was sitting on the hood of one of the trucks when something hit her in the chest. She then heard something rolling down the hood and found that it was a BB.

Another individual told deputies he turned on the light bar on his truck and saw a man standing in a yard about 60-70 yards away holding a gun, then the man went inside a house directly across from where the trucks were parked, according to the report.

According to the report, the officers saw a man, identified in the report as Scott Howard Wagner, sitting on the porch of the house the witness identified and spoke to him. Wagner told officers he had made the first call about the people across the street shining lights in his home. The officers asked about the BB gun and Wagner replied that he had no weapons of any type. The deputies asked if they could look around the man’s property; Wagner told them they could not look around the property without a search warrant.

According to the report, the officers continued to speak with Wagner advising him of the evidence they had thus far and after a few minutes, he admitted that he shot a BB gun across the yard because he didn’t know what else to do about the people shining lights.

One of the officers spoke to the woman who was hit by the BB; she advised that she did want to prosecute, according to the report.

The officers then arrested Wagner for second degree assault and battery and transported him to the Dorchester County Detention Center.

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